Meredith Salenger, now that’s a woman. I remember watching ‘The Journey of Natty Gann‘ as a kid, and I’m thinking she is going to be one beautiful woman. She was 15 at the time. And that is exactly what happened. Then looking at her IMDB resume, I see a couple of TV movies, some other movies, The Kiss, Dream a Little Dream, then it gets weird. I see some voice over work, some more made for TV movies (a secondary role in Lake Placid for God’s sake!), some indies, some straight to video… I don’t get it? She has the Russian Jewish pedigree made for Hollywood. She has the Harvard degree. She’s beautiful as all get out. Yet she never seemed to have the showbiz career I would have predicted back in ’85. Strange. What do I know? The history of Hollywood is littered with head scratchers. She’s on Twitter and possibly Facebook. She even did a strange/fun little WordPress blog interview with a fan/nut here. Very strange. Some of the pictures are kind of iffy. I picked the best ones I saw. (I suppose a lot of them suffered in the conversion from analog to digital, such was that era. In no way am I dissing on her. Its the over exposure and lack of focus on some.)

In the very strange interview at the link above, Meredith mentions she had no idea the ill effects that going to Harvard for 4 years would have on her career. She said no one in her family was “in the business”, to guide her. It makes you wonder what her manager was thinking? She thought she’d be able to go to college, and have her career take up just where it had left off. She’d graduate and the offers would just come rolling in. 4 years is a long time in the entertainment industry (I don’t think the Spice Girls were together 4 years). I just noticed something from looking at her photos. She’s not the ‘big toothy grin‘ type of bombshell, much more laidback. She definitely  did not fit Hollywood’s stereotype of the Heather Thomas/Heather Locklear/Judy Landers beauty queen. Meredith couldn’t turn her brain off and be the mindless social butterfly. The others were just as smart, they were just able to flip a switch. So anyway, I’d go back and read that interview of her on WordPress, its quirky, but it offers some honest insight into her personality. Which is nice. (What’s kind a funny is that of all my posts covering beautiful women for the past 80 years, Meredith is getting the most hits. Bizarre.)

I just realized what happened to her. She had the worst manager of all time! Natty Gann was a real movie. Wholesome, decent plot, good direction. A solid movie. She’d come on to the scene and made a splash. Now what? What do you do next? Crap? Cause its a paycheck? Or do you hold out for something decent? Molly Ringwald at this time fell into some decent stuff. Leader of the ‘Brat Pack’. Candles, Pink, Breakfast Club. Not masterpiece theater but some solid stuff. 25 years later when Jennifer Lawrence was a teen, deciding which way her career was going, had a choice. She didn’t choose crap. She chose Poker House, Winter’s Bone, Burning Plain. Really solid stuff. Meredith when she was a teen chose crap. The Kiss? Dream a Little Dream? Those are 5’ers (not good on IMDB’s ‘10 scale‘). Nobody on her team had any vision. Teen idols don’t last very long, the flavor of the month is very fickle. Ask David Cassidy, Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett. Its the difference between building your career on rock or on sand. Meredith’s career was built on sand.

[1/24/21 update: It is the most bizarre thing to see the number of hits roll in every day of horny men lusting over Meredith, okay maybe that’s just me. But for whatever reason men find this obscure outpost about an obscure actress. I mean I’ve done a lot of posts on a lot of beautiful women, and to have this one standout is confusing. I mean come on now, these posts go back roughly 100 years, and the one woman men want to look at most is Meredith Salenger? One of the things I think about with her is the comparison to Brooke Shields. Brooke went to Princeton I believe for 4 years and while she had a career afterwards, it wasn’t the absolute madness of the career she had in the late 70’s and early 80’s. I don’t know if she had more focus or what. Meredith strikes me as a piece of driftwood getting tossed around by the waves, not knowing exactly what she wants.]